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Museo di Castelvecchio

Carlo Scarpa

In Castelvecchio, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts

Photos by Federico Puggioni

Federico Puggioni

It’s significant to think, for the
history of the architecture, that a fortified castle symbolizing and
catacterizing the town could change only in recent times, compared to
its large-span history; recent and peace times. Not for the reason it
was conceived for, but thanks to a more than 10 years surgery.

Federico Puggioni

Carlo Scarpa had been contacted by
Licisco Magagnato in 1958 for a temporary exhibition. The synergy
created between the former partisan, political militant, historian of
arts and the venetian Professor continued in different phases until
1964, year of the new opening of the museum.
The sign of the opera scarpiana is the willing of renovation: the set-up
fixed in the early 20s by the director Avena and the architect Forlati
gave to what lasted of the Austrian military complex grafted on the
castle: a general historicistics settings, made by an assemblage of real
gothic elements on the façade and historically reconstructed frescoes
and rooms.

Federico Puggioni

Scarpa’s intervention overlays as a huge
mediation between this old entity and the surgery, aiming to calibrate a
new museum based on modern museographic bases thought for a slow and
intimate experience of visit.

Federico Puggioni

The main interventions are radical
modification to the structure and a new path of visit, the opening of a
forgotten but existing gate connecting the two main courtyards, passing
under the public street of the bridge. Or also the collocation of the
Cangrande’s statue, the most precious valuable monument of the veronese
history on a 7 meters concrete basament: yes, in public, yes, outside
and for free, but in a ad-hoc created scenario, or the insertion of the
cube of the sacello and of its marble-mosaic tiles.

Federico Puggioni

All is completed by several fine
interventions such as the “insertion” of a mondrian-inspired layer
behind the gothic openings of the two storeys of the Galleria, or the
great work behind the choose and the matching between cements,
concretes, plasters, metals, woods, textiles, venetian stuccos, which
single value is multiplied by the differents works on their surfaces; it
contributes definitely to give the feeling of a timeless place.